Bay Area

An Occupy Oakland protester walks away from a police barricade on January 28, 2012.

Attorneys Dan Siegel and Anne Weill from Oakland law firm Siegel and Yee filed a suit in U.S. District Court this week against the city of Oakland and several police officers on behalf of eight individuals who form the core of a class action suit stemming from what Siegel & Yee allege were a violation of Occupy Oakland protesters' rights during Occupy demonstrations on Jan. 28, 2012.

Allegations against the city and the police include unlawful mass arrest, incarceration in inhumane and unlawful conditions of 409 protesters and members of the press; and OPD's violation of the Oakland Police Crowd Management Crowd control policy put in place in 2004.

Interestingly, the legal brief links the alleged misconduct of the police on Jan. 28, 2012, to prior acts of misconduct during protests that took place in 2010 after the shooting of Oscar Grant by a BART police office and during the protests after that officer's verdict and sentencing were announced. Among the actions called out in both demonstrations were trapping demonstrators (the infamous "kettling"), use of excessive force and failure to give dispersal orders or permit marchers to disperse.

Seigel and Yee ask the city and the police to stop using what it calls illegal practices and call for monetary damages for those detained but not arrested. The suit also seeks to have records connected to the arrests of the protesters sealed and/or destroyed.

The eight plaintiffs named in the suit include Steve Angell, Miles Avery Molly Batchelder, Sri Louise aka Louise Coles, Cicily Cooper, Shareef Elfiki, Theodore Hector and Lindsay Weber. As a class action suit, the court can act to create a class that could represent all 409 people mentioned as a group in the complaint.